Watson to Cleveland
- Thread starter Oil Can Dan
- Start date
Why? The NFL routinely slaps its own suspension on top of investigations which don't lead to indictment.
Don't disagree Watson should lose more than $1 million, but for some context, year one base for Allen's new deal was $920k, $990k for Mahomes, and $1.6 million for Dak. It's not even remotely an outlier, it's how these deals are structured.
This may be the funniest side note of this thread. Cleveland is going to worry about trading Baker within the AFC? Really? He sucks. They probably prefer he's in the AFC.
Which one of them was also facing 20+ sexual assault charges and a potential suspension after being traded?
He could be facing zero sexual assault charges and based on Cleveland's cap situation and the normal structure of recent large QB deals, I would guess his base salary for next year is probably right around $1 million. It can simultaneously be true that Watson is a horrible human who deserves to lose more than his $1 million 2022 base salary and that Cleveland did not do anything out of the norm with his contract structure that suggests the team was going out of its way to limit Watson's financial downside in the event of a suspension.
he wasn’t found to be generally aware of the ideal gas law or other operation of science. Otherwise his range is from 4 games (Brady) to bring burned at the stake (Bruno)
Absolutely!
Take a knee and you're blackballed by the NFL. Live a life of a pure scumbag and get $230 million. Wow, just wow!
8 games is currently the standard for when you are credibly accused of Sexual Assault but not charged.
I think you are off the length of suspension. Given Brady got 4 games for destroying his phone, DW is looking at 2 games easily.
I think one question is whether Goodell is going to do a “time served” punishment bc Houston sat him last year (Watson was never on the Commissioner’s Exempt List for some reason that never made sense to me) and give him a very light—or even a nonexistent—suspension. Honestly, nothing would surprise me at this point.
I think you have this exactly right.
Goddell is going to announce a massive suspension offset by the season he just sat out. He'll then proclaim that the NFL is a leader on the issue of sexual assault and move forward.
Sounds about right. They are shameless. Eight games in 2022 would probably strike the right PR balance between we “care” and “no criminal charges”, but they’ll fuck it up. Will this lead to teams “self-suspending” players more often in the future?
I think this is right and I expect that the NFL has already told this to the Browns and the other teams that were serious about Watson. Whether the NFL suspends him is a big question mark but there’s no particular reason the NFLdoesnt know it or not couldn’t discretely share it with particular nfl ownership
8 is the number I’ve come up with as well. Zeke got suspended for 6 games, but he didn’t have 22 women lined up accusing him of sexual assault.
This would be an “unprecedented” suspension, which is how they will try to spin it. Meanwhile Calvin Ridley sits out an entire season for betting $1000 on the Falcons moneyline through an NFL partner.
The crazy thing is, there are other ways to win. Watson is elite but there are a number of elite QBs he will have to get through to even make the Super Bowl, and 2 who are arguably comparable to him in his own division.
And while I am not super-impressed with Mayfield he's an above-average QB, is just 27 and he played pretty tough last year when he was very banged up. If he had the Bengals' receivers and a healthy shoulder I'm not sure he'd do appreciably worse than Burrow, for example.
Even if you were OK with having Watson on your team, I would think that a strict dollars and cents accounting of everything would not lead you to this place. Is the upgrade from Mayfield to Watson, which increases your SB chances a few percentage points, worth everything you paid for Watson in assets and cap hit, AND the PR hit? In order to make this deal you have to basically not care about the latter. Maybe they'll fill the stadium every week and Watson jerseys will fly off the shelves but I don't know.
Edit: Let me add: Maybe they think the outstanding civil suits can be settled but what if there is some other misconduct that he's done or may do in the future? Perhaps someone has evidence and decides to come forward now? I assume there is some way to get out of the contract in that case but you just lost the draft picks.
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I grew up on the real Browns – the team that left town during my college years. They died when they moved to Baltimore and haven't been replaced. I gave the expansion Browns a shot, but years of complete incompetence coupled with their insistence on trying to brainwash me into thinking this is somehow still the same franchise I grew up watching even though that franchise still exists under the Ravens name completely turned me off. I still have most of their games on in the background, but I'm not emotionally invested and probably enjoy their humiliation more than I do their wins.
My interest in football has waned in general. Aside from those aforementioned Browns games, I only watch NFL games come playoff time and the violence and immorality in the sport has turned me off quite a bit. Unfortunately, I'm a hypocrite and can't shake my enjoyment of the college game. I'm not sure I'll have Browns games turned on at all anymore, and if I do, it will be solely to root for Watson and Haslam's whole lot to be a complete debacle. The Cleveland poll I saw around 5:00pm yesterday showed 64% of Browns fans against this deal.
My interest in football has waned in general. Aside from those aforementioned Browns games, I only watch NFL games come playoff time and the violence and immorality in the sport has turned me off quite a bit. Unfortunately, I'm a hypocrite and can't shake my enjoyment of the college game. I'm not sure I'll have Browns games turned on at all anymore, and if I do, it will be solely to root for Watson and Haslam's whole lot to be a complete debacle. The Cleveland poll I saw around 5:00pm yesterday showed 64% of Browns fans against this deal.
I agree, one of those guys will be in the Super Bowl every year and at least three will decline the invitation, Mac still has a shot!
The Dolphins may very well suck next year, but I’m eternally grateful that I didn’t have to wind up dealing with what Browns fans have been forced to.
Considering the situation, It’s unfathomable to me that Watson got to call his shot, get paid nearly a quarter million dollars and have it take multiple high picks to acquire him. Had he been suspended and cut, I’d begrudgingly understand some team claiming him as a low risk, zero tolerance, rehabilitation project…but the way it played out…I just don’t understand how it’s worth it.
Some around these parts may not realize it, but winning a Super Bowl is hard. Chances are Cleveland wasn’t going to win one the next few years, with or without Watson…I’ll never understand how this is worth the risk when you factor in the morality/or and the compensation they had to give up.
Considering the situation, It’s unfathomable to me that Watson got to call his shot, get paid nearly a quarter million dollars and have it take multiple high picks to acquire him. Had he been suspended and cut, I’d begrudgingly understand some team claiming him as a low risk, zero tolerance, rehabilitation project…but the way it played out…I just don’t understand how it’s worth it.
Some around these parts may not realize it, but winning a Super Bowl is hard. Chances are Cleveland wasn’t going to win one the next few years, with or without Watson…I’ll never understand how this is worth the risk when you factor in the morality/or and the compensation they had to give up.
Jacoby Brissett will be interim starter/backup
https://www.nfl.com/news/bills-acquire-browns-qb-case-keenum-for-2022-seventh-round-pick
https://www.nfl.com/news/bills-acquire-browns-qb-case-keenum-for-2022-seventh-round-pick
I want this all to go terribly wrong for Watson and the Browns, but how wrong can it go for Watson considering the allegations against him and the fact that he's still got 230M guaranteed?
I'd like to think we can all trash the Watson situation without implying that betting on the sport you play in any way, shape or form is OK, even in relative terms. You CANNOT do what Ridley did, period.
We’re in agreement, however I think we can all also agree that what Watson is accused of doing is 1,000x worse at a human level, but the NFL will hand out a penalty maybe half as severe because it doesn’t affect their bottom line.
Ridley's sin isn't fundamentally about the bottom line - it's about competitive integrity, without which professional sport cannot exist. Betting is an existential threat, and the NFL had to act accordingly with Ridley. (I agree with you about which crimes are worse at a human level and by how much.)
^^ This is one reason why Goodell came down so hard on NE for both Spygate and the absurd Deflategate issues. For the sake of competitive integrity, manipulating the game or gaining an illegal competitive edge is a more grievous sin/crime than domestic violence.
Obviously we know that Deflategate didn’t even happen but the point is that if it did, it’s more serious from a competitive integrity standpoint than real human crimes.
Obviously we know that Deflategate didn’t even happen but the point is that if it did, it’s more serious from a competitive integrity standpoint than real human crimes.
Can someone walk me through why there were no charges against Watson. Can they not use the number of accusations as evidence of a pattern so it was just like two dozen he said she said cases?
I believe that it’s because when it comes to criminal charges, the burden is on the plaintiffs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Watson did the things they’re accusing him of.
Short of video, or audio, or a witness, or Watson’s DNA, that’s pretty difficult to do, even if you have 22 similar stories.
He will probably be suspended. He may pay them settlements in civil cases, but he basically gets to resume his previous life, with a guaranteed 230 million dollars coming his way.
The scary thing is that if Watson truly is a serial sexual predator, these events are unlikely to teach him a lesson, but are more likely to embolden him.
All we know is that the grand jury declined to recommend charges. That's typically fatal to the prosecution's case. https://www.nfl.com/news/grand-jury-declines-to-indict-texans-qb-deshaun-watson-following-allegations-of-
My guess is that it has something to do with not being able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any of the cases involved non-consentual criminal behavior.
I know no one wants to really relitigate this, but I’ve never really heard it emphasized enough of the reason Goodall were after Pat’s was because they were after NFL.
As soon as the news broke, Pat’s came out swinging with a statement saying the league was going to have to apologize and they were dead wrong. They were dead as soon as they went after the shield.
In any case, if they actually give a shit about competitive integrity, not just pounding on a player who made a small bet to win, then they’d be going after the Miami owner who allegedly paid his coach to throw games.
My back of the napkin math calculation say this is approximately 230million times worse than the parlay bet, and with zero repercussions, so I call bullshit.
(edit: to be clear on this Sunday morn, I’m calling BS on league not on BB jones!)
Do we know they aren’t? It’s not like this is an either / or situation. The Dolphins situation is a he said / he said case and a lot fuzzier than the Ridley case, which was as open and shut as you can get, so you should expect a much longer time to determine it’s veracity.
I also very much disagree with your waving away of Ridley’s transgression. To keep the integrity of the athletic competition, you can’t have players betting on games and, when you start making exceptions, the slope will start getting very slippery IMO.
I also very much disagree with your waving away of Ridley’s transgression. To keep the integrity of the athletic competition, you can’t have players betting on games and, when you start making exceptions, the slope will start getting very slippery IMO.
No it wasn't about competitive integrity on the field why they came down so hard on the Patriots. It's a bullshit patina they put on going after the Partriots. And the reason we know this is there are plenty of other times where teams have been caught doing thing to impact the "integrity" of the game, and sometimes didn't even get the fines that are proscribed in the rule book or the barest min fines for it.
The Chargers stickum towel, the vikings (or their opponent or both) heating footballs up on the sideline, and a bunch of others I am sure if I wasn't just going off memory.